Shuttleworth: Ubuntu’s goal is one OS from phones to supercomputers

Ubuntu phones and tablets may not be a reality yet, but Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth says Ubuntu is "close" to running on everything from smartphones to supercomputers.

"The really interesting opportunity is to unify all of these different kinds of computing," Shuttleworth said in a Q&A with Slashdot readers published today. "Let's make one OS that runs on the phone AND on your supercomputer. We're close to that now—we know Ubuntu makes a great cloud OS and a great server OS and a great desktop. So I think the next frontier is to create a seamless experience from the embedded world to the cloud. And yes, that's very much what we are focused on at Canonical."

The Linux kernel, of course, already runs on smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers, and supercomputers. While Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux desktop, it has done nothing to stop the dominance of Windows and it only runs on mobile devices in limited ways. There is Ubuntu for Android, which aims to turn Android phones into Ubuntu desktops when connected to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard. And Ubuntu can be installed on the Nexus 7 tablet in an experimental fashion.

Shuttleworth's stated timing for Ubuntu on phones and tablets is still so far in the future that it's hard to have much confidence in its prospects. "We've said clearly that the phone and tablet are key stories we need to tell by 14.04 LTS," Shuttleworth said. Ubuntu 14.04 comes out in April 2014.

While major PC vendors are shipping computers with Ubuntu pre-installed, Shuttleworth noted they are "nervous to promote something new to PC buyers." That's one reason Canonical believes mobile is crucial to its success. "If we can get PC buyers familiar with Ubuntu as a phone and tablet experience, then they may be more willing buy it on the PC too," he said.

Ubuntu is touch-ready, but still a desktop OS

The Unity desktop on the latest versions of Ubuntu is designed to be touch-ready, but Shuttleworth defended its usability with mouse and keyboard. "Unity positions itself to be ready for touch-only platforms like the tablet and phone, but the desktop flavor of Unity is optimized for the desktop," he said. "That's why we have such great support for keyboard navigation and hotkeys, why we have menus and indicators that you really need a mouse and keyboard to use. Yes, we have big app icons. But so have some desktop shells for 15 years (before the NextStep Dock, even)."

"On balance, I think Ubuntu's share of users has continued to rise, based on trends in hard-to-fake sources like Wikipedia traffic logs," he continued. "Unity is by far the most widely used shell on Ubuntu, despite the depressed-hipster 'can't live with unity' meme."

One reader asked whether Ubuntu "might be losing its way amongst the more technical users" because of decisions including the inclusion of Amazon shopping results in Dash searches. The reader also said Ubuntu "forc[ed] a beta-level UI onto users for 3 versions of Ubuntu from 11.04-12.04."

Without addressing those specific points, Shuttleworth replied "We are all at risk of stagnating if we don't pursue the future, vigorously. But if you pursue the future, you have to accept that not everybody will agree with your vision."

Here are a few other questions Shuttleworth answered:

Why doesn't Ubuntu include Android emulation so people can run their vast catalog of Android apps on their laptop, tablet, or the like?

Because no OS ever succeeded by emulating another OS. Android is great, but if we want to succeed we need to bring something new and better to market.

If we said we aimed to run Android apps, then two things would happen. Every developer that potentially cared about Ubuntu would feel it was OK to just write an app for Android. And every bug that would be specific to our implementation of Android's APIs would of course be a bug for us to fix, not a bug for the app developer. So, we won't do that.

Will Ubuntu ever be a certified platform for running Oracle databases?

That's not really something I can say "yes" to ;)

We do know that there are some very large Oracle databases running on Ubuntu, and the people running them get all the support they need from Oracle. If you're a large Oracle shop, call them up and ask for support on Ubuntu. But of course, with Oracle's own Linux now in the market, Oracle is unlikely to promote another Linux until they change strategy.

Nowadays, we get asked about this very rarely—people seem to have moved to care a lot more about Hadoop and some of the newer big-data options than they do about traditional SQL. And of course Ubuntu is by far the most popular OS for large big-data deployments. Perhaps for that reason we are not pushing Oracle very hard ourselves.

What is the appropriate level of the government's role in space? (Note: Shuttleworth was one of the first space tourists.)

The national space missions should be exploratory and seeking to push back boundaries, not crowding out the basics. I think the agencies failed to recognize that they could facilitate private sector activity in areas they pioneered, so we got stuck in agency-monopolized access to low earth orbit for decades. That is changing now, and the real win will be that agencies get lower-cost lift and certification and training options that let them plan the really pioneering missions of tomorrow—Mars and the outer planets.

Regulation is good for established markets—I generally like to see governments regulate hard to achieve efficiency and level playing fields in markets. What gets broken is government actors that participate directly, as Fannie and Freddie do in real estate in the US, for example. But I'm not a libertarian (apart from a brief spell in student days)—I've seen far too much corrupt and nasty behavior by corporates that act in a very narrow set of interests.

So, when you take that trip to low-earth orbit, or parabolic firecracker ride courtesy of one of the space tourism operators, you'll be glad of a regulatory framework that aims for passenger safety. And the professional astronauts, who don't really give a hoot about personal safety beyond the obvious 'don't be an idiot with my life', will be glad for the access to deep space that they would get courtesy of a vibrant market in the 'easy' stuff.

78 Reader Comments

I'm surprised, yet a little delighted, that the posts for this article didn't devolve into pages and pages of flamewar against Unity.

That being said, having read a *lot* of such flamewars over the past while since Unity was introduced (mainly because this topic has enraged me a good deal), I feel it noteworthy to add something of this.

There should never have been an attempt to unify the desktop and the cell phone. The method of using a computer with a keyboard and a mouse versus a finger is so radically different that it inherently and obviously requires a different interface.

That Mark pushed Ubuntu down this road has destroyed any foothold the distribution had on my computing experience. Instead of expanding the capabilities and moving toward a more functional and usable operating system, they dragged it down to uselessness. They were trying to be the distribution with the benefits of linux (free and free) with the usability and familiarity of windows. When ubuntu seemed to have that as its primary mission, I was all for it. I don't have a need and will never have a want to have the same experience on my desktop as on my cell.

Never gonna happen. Why? Canonical isn't doing enough of the development of the OS. You can't take over the market when you only contribute a small portion of the overall technology and when you have a bad case of NIH. I used to like to hear about Shuttleworth...

I think we've got a much better chance of seeing Android successfully transitioning to the desktop than Ubuntu succeeding in the mobile and desktop space. (That is if Google were interested in doing that of course.)

Well the next big thing in IT, one OS that does it all. What a crock. Why does that sound like such marketing crap?

An admirable goal would be just to the get the damn boxes to be able to sync up properly AND generate the same file formats. Why try to load down a smart-phone with a Unity (or some other desktop) desktop?

The idiots in Redmond have already screwed their OS up. Does Shuttleworth have delusions of Balmer?

I would ask Canonical that like all Linux distros, please keep it possible to dump ALL the touchscreen crap when the desktop does NOT have a touch screen?

I think we've got a much better chance of seeing Android successfully transitioning to the desktop than Ubuntu succeeding in the mobile and desktop space. (That is if Google were interested in doing that of course.)

Well, the closest thing to that would be ChromeOS/chromebooks.

Not Android proper, but that appears to be what Google is bringing to the table at this time.

No, but it's still Canonical's best shot at increasing its desktop presence.

They won't need to buy Ubuntu. It's free (as in speech and as in beer).But they might buy a desktop that happens to come with Ubuntu pre-loaded.Especially if/when the OS is sold and listed separately, rather being a "take it or leave it" bundle.

Of course, Canonical seems determined to take Ubuntu in a direction that renders many (most?) of the advantages to the users, otherwise inherent in using Linux, rather moot.

Mobile OS users are already used to being heavily data-mined by their OS and carriers, so the spyware in the Ubuntu desktop really wouldn't phase them...

I'd correct that to "Mobile OS users have no choice, being heavily data-mined by their OS and carriers, so the spyware in the Ubuntu desktop is really no different.". And most users are completely unaware how much they are being tracked, analyzed, spied on, and sold like meat to whomever wants to profit from their data. But even if they were, they'd likely not care, so they would indeed remain unphased.... Personal data loss is nothing compared to being ostracized for not having a smart phone.

Either that or some people don't really give a shit if an advertiser knows they went to a Starbucks when they get free email (gmail), maps (Google Maps), AR (Google Goggles), decently accurate translation (Google Translate), or gee anything Google does. It's worth ALL of those services to you to not have advertisers know you like Levi Jeans?

[Mark Shuttleworks:] On balance, I think Ubuntu's share of users has continued to rise, based on trends in hard-to-fake sources like Wikipedia traffic logs

Hum, he should know better... My "User-Agent" string says "Ubuntu", and yet I am using Linux Mint 13 (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04). Ubuntu lost me at 11.04, and Ubuntu 12.10 further reinforce that I made the right move by switching to Linux Mint.

Mobile OS users are already used to being heavily data-mined by their OS and carriers, so the spyware in the Ubuntu desktop really wouldn't phase them...

I'd correct that to "Mobile OS users have no choice, being heavily data-mined by their OS and carriers, so the spyware in the Ubuntu desktop is really no different.". And most users are completely unaware how much they are being tracked, analyzed, spied on, and sold like meat to whomever wants to profit from their data. But even if they were, they'd likely not care, so they would indeed remain unphased.... Personal data loss is nothing compared to being ostracized for not having a smart phone.

The only feature that I need on my smart phone is the calendar app. If feature phones worked well with Google Calendar and had a decent texting interface I probably wouldn't have this thing.

No it will not. Why? Because it does not actually change the primary reason why Ubuntu or any other flavor of Linux has failed to gain any desktop market share. Mainstream software vendor support. It could be the best OS ever but if the applications people know and love and the ones most businesses need don't run under Linux then it's a pretty useless OS for anyone other than techies like most of us here. a hand full of top shelf vendors like Adobe need to be convinced to port their most popular applications to Linux before people can realistically view Linux as a viable alternative to Windows or Apple OS.

You're absolutely correct.

I would add that in my discussions with FOSS advocates, my software specific criticisms have often been met with, "Well, we may not have Program X, but we have Program Y, which is close enough". For many of us, "close enough" simply doesn't cut it.

Ubuntu on everything? Please! The developers can not even get full functionality from one distro to another. What was functioning fine on ver 12.04 is now not working on 12.10. Why is that? And before anyone accuses me of being a troll, I run linux on more of my systems than Windows, and I also run Mac. Until the developers of the different linux variants, ubuntu kubuntu, xbuntu, mint, etc....put their collective talents together, pick one or two versions of linux to develope FULLY, Ubuntu and all the other variants, will be also-rans and never account for more than 1% of the user market. Oh, and by the way stop that silly 6 month distro cycle, releasing a product that still has bugs in it. I have attempted to get friends and co-workers to try linux but due to their bugginess, they always gravitate back to windows. Go on a 12 month cycle if need be to get everything right otherwise ubuntu on everything? I think not.

Regards,

Partially agree with you. The problem is not that there are dozens of Linux variants. The problem is that one of them, Ubuntu, which is probably the only company backed desktop Linux out there and definitely the most popular, can't seem to get their act together between releases. Even if you decide there's only one Linux desktop to care about -and given its popularity and the fact that there's a lot of money behind it, that would be Ubuntu- you're still making a risky bet.

Did you know you can't run any LibreOffice version after 3.6.02 on the latest Ubuntu LTS?

Supposedly, you're meant to run Ubuntu LTS versions, which will come out every two years and are supported for five years. But almost none of your apps will update until you install the next ordinary release, which is only six months away and isn't supposed to be very stable. You might believe that the popular PPA workaround would solve that. Wrong. Did you know that you can't have the latest LibreOffice on the latest Ubuntu LTS even if you subscribe to the LibreOffice non-stable PPA? Yep, the second most important app (after the browser) for an ordinary business desktop, was out of date pretty soon after the last LTS's release. I said to myself "I'll subscribe to the PPA and problem solved". But no, no problem solved. Even PPA support stopped after 3.6.02 for LibreOffice (apparently because Unity changed midway and current Unity is not compatible with Unity in 12.04).

No ordinary desktop user -business or home- in their right mind would completely install a fresh OS every six months. That's what LTSs are for, Canonical would say. A two year cycle sounds fine. But most people don't know that means you don't get official updates for applications. You only get updates from PPAs which aren't recommended -neither supported- by Canonical. So you're stuck on April 2012 versions for every app on your desktop, except Firefox and Thunderbird (which do receive updates, for some strange reason).

So you say, OK, PPAs aren't that risky. I'll get along with them until 14.04, which is the next LTS, coming in April 2014. But when it comes to LibreOffice -let me insist: the second most used app, after the browser, in an office and probably homes too- you're stuck at 3.6.02 (current version is 3.6.4 and 4.0 is expected for next Spring).

If you don't want to risk your system and install 12.10 (which has a terrible record so far) or you try to keep some sanity and not upgrade your whole 20 seat office computers every six months, you'll be unable to run the latest version of the only reasonable office suite for your desktop.

And don't even dare to ask the devs to decouple system updates from application updates. Nobody will listen to you (or worse, you'll be called names).

That's the Ubuntu world today. And the playful owner of the whole thing just cares about making his toy run from cellphones to supercomputers...

(I'm an Ubuntu user and admin for family, friends and office customers, fed up by all this nonsense. Currently trying to find a solution to escape the Windows/OSX duopoly, still having a company suppporting my desktop OS of choice and not becoming a geeky admin spending the whole day in teenagers forums and mailing lists.)

PS1: "You can compile the latest version of anything." You still get that "solution" when asking on forums and mailing lists. Yes, believe me, you still get that line in 2012.

PS2: There's another big company behind a Linux desktop: Red Hat, but a) You have to pay for it, while the situation with system/apps updates is no better than Canonical's, and b) The desktop is not their specialty and they admit they don't really care about it since "there's no business to be made there". Red Hat make their money on servers. If you run one, that's your distro. But if you run desktops, it's not. Fedora is just a benchtest for the real thing. You don't run benchtests instead of real OSs when it comes to your customers or loved ones.

PS3: You can download the "vanilla" LibreOffice from the oficial website and do some past century command-line install (no single .deb whatsoever). However, you'll lose all the integration Canonical puts into its patched version of LibreOffice, including the ability to have a global menu and HUD functionality.

There should never have been an attempt to unify the desktop and the cell phone. The method of using a computer with a keyboard and a mouse versus a finger is so radically different that it inherently and obviously requires a different interface.

[...]

I don't have a need and will never have a want to have the same experience on my desktop as on my cell.

Absolutely agree with you, but as a curiosity, I find that Unity might be a good candidate should that need ever exist. In its current state it's pretty easy to use for anyone with a keyboard and a mouse (save the obssesive and idiotic need to hide the app menu until you reach the top of the screen with your mouse). At the same time, I can find it very easy to implement on a touch environment. Of course the apps will be different and developed for that environment (none of the desktop apps are at this point and migration doesn't seem feasible at all for most of them).

Shuttleworth, who's first and foremost a geek, then a business man (and sadly also believes he's an UI guru) might have a point. Maybe -maybe- there's a market for people that want the same overall experience on their tablet/phone and their desktop. So far, only the desktop environment "looks" (but doesn't behave) like it might be a a touch environment. Apps of course don't and probably never will. No, hiding the menu doesn't a desktop app magically become a touch app, dear Shutty.

Linux is for people that like a text based ui. It is maintained for server environments where this is appropriate. Please stop pretending this is not the case. The sooner this happens, the sooner Linus Torvalds can stop writing multi page rants about how linux gui sucks coconuts and large ripe Dole bananas.

Ubuntu on everything? Please! The developers can not even get full functionality from one distro to another. What was functioning fine on ver 12.04 is now not working on 12.10. Why is that? And before anyone accuses me of being a troll, I run linux on more of my systems than Windows, and I also run Mac. Until the developers of the different linux variants, ubuntu kubuntu, xbuntu, mint, etc....put their collective talents together, pick one or two versions of linux to develope FULLY, Ubuntu and all the other variants, will be also-rans and never account for more than 1% of the user market. Oh, and by the way stop that silly 6 month distro cycle, releasing a product that still has bugs in it. I have attempted to get friends and co-workers to try linux but due to their bugginess, they always gravitate back to windows. Go on a 12 month cycle if need be to get everything right otherwise ubuntu on everything? I think not.

Regards,

While I won't dispute what you say, but the same problems exist on Windows. I have a ton of stuff that ran on XP and will not run on Windows 7 (granted, some of it is from DOS, 3.1 and 95 days). And then comes "patch Tuesday" with the typical, mostly "security" updates that have a tendency to break something. BTW, for a "more secure" system, Windows 7 seems to have a plethora of security updates - I check the update logs and I'd estimate 80% - 90% are security updates.

I have mixed emotions about that Ubuntu-based 6 month cycle. While, I've tried, but haven't used other none Debian (or at least non-Ubuntu Debian-based) distros, I don't believe they are all on a 6 month release cycle - e.g., ZorinOS, SolusOS, RedHat, SUSE. The one thing Ubuntu should do is allow you to upgrade to the latest release from any previous release. The idea of upgrading every release or from Long Term Release to Long Term Release is not the best way (although I believe Ubuntu is going to a 5 year Long Term Release - can't recall).

I agree it would serve Linux best if they got together and and agreed on a standard base system. They should also agree of portability of applications so any given one could run unchanged on any other Linux system. Likewise with the package managers.

Personally, I think Shuttleworth is smoking that wacky-tabacky or some such (I seem to detect a faint aroma of something). If he can't get the H/W people to install it as a user choice, how does he think he is going to get people to use it?

As an aside, I completely disagree with him regarding the effect of emulation - WINE (Which for this purpose *is* an emulator) is the perfect example of something that drives improvements of native linux applications just because it means they are competing with non-native apps.

His argument for not emulating android seems to me to be on par with the argument for Microsoft to kill Java. It seems historically bad.

Actually, to call it an emulator is a misnomer. A true computer emulator is equivalent to an interpreter. It runs a H/W instruction set that is different than the instruction set of the emulator's H/W. Machine A emulates Machine B. You can run the binary of B on machine A via an emulator.

In the case of WINE, it actually runs the DLLs and EXEs. While I don't use Photoshop, I have downloaded and ran a number of Windows S/W (e.g., Notepad++) under WINE. They all run quite fast.

Unity is a tablet GUI, not a desktop GUI. If I was using it on a tablet I might love it, but I don't: I use (well, I used to) Ubuntu on my desktop, and so I hate Unity.

I now use Mint and Xubuntu instead.

I agree and also no longer use Ubuntu (while I still have 10.04 on one laptop). I have issues with Gnome 3 also. I found ZorinOS, SolusOS both provide a Gnome2 desktop (and are Debian-based). I also use Mint with MATE 1.4 - I like the use of panels - top and bottom.

Actually there is/was one - called OS/2. Banks and other companies still use it to this day. Actually, even IBM recognized that various H/W configurations call for different operating systems. Years ago they tried to get their customers to move to the "big honker" OS, but their customers wouldn't buy in. For one thing, smaller businesses could not afford the H/W and IT staff to support it. For another, they didn't want to go through the hoops of "upgrading" with all its unknowns and setbacks that would make the cost even higher than estimated. It seems both Microsoft and Shuttleworth never learned their History lessons. BTW, it was another reason why IBM didn't put their mainframe OSes on the early PCs (not only because of the memory constraints of their current OSes at the time, but also because of the complexity. Also, if you go back to the original development of those mainframe OSes, they were designed to run in 8K machines!!! The "kernel" (actually called the OS back then) ran in less than 4K. The daddy OS ran in 64K (but more efficiently in 256K) and they all ran with true multi-tasking.

[Mark Shuttleworks:] On balance, I think Ubuntu's share of users has continued to rise, based on trends in hard-to-fake sources like Wikipedia traffic logs

Hum, he should know better... My "User-Agent" string says "Ubuntu", and yet I am using Linux Mint 13 (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04). Ubuntu lost me at 11.04, and Ubuntu 12.10 further reinforce that I made the right move by switching to Linux Mint.

Check out ZorinOS and SolusOS. I have used both and Mint with MATE 1.4.

Linux is for people that like a text based ui. It is maintained for server environments where this is appropriate. Please stop pretending this is not the case. The sooner this happens, the sooner Linus Torvalds can stop writing multi page rants about how linux gui sucks coconuts and large ripe Dole bananas.

I don't agree with you at all. Linux is not a text-based system any more than Windows 7 is. In fact, you have a number of choices in Desktop Environments, all GUI-based. You can even have a "sudo" enabled window. I tend to find myself using the command line in Windows 7 (and also XP) as often as I use it in Linux - which is occasionally - and that is because I want to get into the guts of the system. On my Windows 7 system I had to install DOSBox to run some of the programs that ran in XP on the command line.

Is that really true now, or are we just ignoring flash games? Have touch games now surpassed flash games?

Flash is on its last legs, especially in mobile. Adobe has cut support for Linux, the current version is the last one they're doing for Linux, Flash isn't even an option on iOS, and even though it works very well on Android, HTML 5 and app-based solutions are rendering it less and less useful. Even the Windows version of Flash could be gone within a couple of years.

[Mark Shuttleworks:] On balance, I think Ubuntu's share of users has continued to rise, based on trends in hard-to-fake sources like Wikipedia traffic logs

Hum, he should know better... My "User-Agent" string says "Ubuntu", and yet I am using Linux Mint 13 (which is based on Ubuntu 12.04). Ubuntu lost me at 11.04, and Ubuntu 12.10 further reinforce that I made the right move by switching to Linux Mint.

Check out ZorinOS and SolusOS. I have used both and Mint with MATE 1.4.

And maybe Ubuntu Update server logs?

You have a point though -- I'm definitely liking Mint 13 with Cinnamon.The only reason I have Ubuntu 12.04 on anything of mine, at all, is so I can be somewhat familiar with it for doing volunteer stuff at the local FreeGeek.

Ubuntu on everything? Please! The developers can not even get full functionality from one distro to another. What was functioning fine on ver 12.04 is now not working on 12.10. Why is that? And before anyone accuses me of being a troll, I run linux on more of my systems than Windows, and I also run Mac. Until the developers of the different linux variants, ubuntu kubuntu, xbuntu, mint, etc....put their collective talents together, pick one or two versions of linux to develope FULLY, Ubuntu and all the other variants, will be also-rans and never account for more than 1% of the user market. Oh, and by the way stop that silly 6 month distro cycle, releasing a product that still has bugs in it. I have attempted to get friends and co-workers to try linux but due to their bugginess, they always gravitate back to windows. Go on a 12 month cycle if need be to get everything right otherwise ubuntu on everything? I think not.

Regards,

Partially agree with you. The problem is not that there are dozens of Linux variants. The problem is that one of them, Ubuntu, which is probably the only company backed desktop Linux out there and definitely the most popular, can't seem to get their act together between releases. Even if you decide there's only one Linux desktop to care about -and given its popularity and the fact that there's a lot of money behind it, that would be Ubuntu- you're still making a risky bet.

Did you know you can't run any LibreOffice version after 3.6.02 on the latest Ubuntu LTS?

Supposedly, you're meant to run Ubuntu LTS versions, which will come out every two years and are supported for five years. But almost none of your apps will update until you install the next ordinary release, which is only six months away and isn't supposed to be very stable. You might believe that the popular PPA workaround would solve that. Wrong. Did you know that you can't have the latest LibreOffice on the latest Ubuntu LTS even if you subscribe to the LibreOffice non-stable PPA? Yep, the second most important app (after the browser) for an ordinary business desktop, was out of date pretty soon after the last LTS's release. I said to myself "I'll subscribe to the PPA and problem solved". But no, no problem solved. Even PPA support stopped after 3.6.02 for LibreOffice (apparently because Unity changed midway and current Unity is not compatible with Unity in 12.04).

No ordinary desktop user -business or home- in their right mind would completely install a fresh OS every six months. That's what LTSs are for, Canonical would say. A two year cycle sounds fine. But most people don't know that means you don't get official updates for applications. You only get updates from PPAs which aren't recommended -neither supported- by Canonical. So you're stuck on April 2012 versions for every app on your desktop, except Firefox and Thunderbird (which do receive updates, for some strange reason).

So you say, OK, PPAs aren't that risky. I'll get along with them until 14.04, which is the next LTS, coming in April 2014. But when it comes to LibreOffice -let me insist: the second most used app, after the browser, in an office and probably homes too- you're stuck at 3.6.02 (current version is 3.6.4 and 4.0 is expected for next Spring).

If you don't want to risk your system and install 12.10 (which has a terrible record so far) or you try to keep some sanity and not upgrade your whole 20 seat office computers every six months, you'll be unable to run the latest version of the only reasonable office suite for your desktop.

And don't even dare to ask the devs to decouple system updates from application updates. Nobody will listen to you (or worse, you'll be called names).

That's the Ubuntu world today. And the playful owner of the whole thing just cares about making his toy run from cellphones to supercomputers...

(I'm an Ubuntu user and admin for family, friends and office customers, fed up by all this nonsense. Currently trying to find a solution to escape the Windows/OSX duopoly, still having a company suppporting my desktop OS of choice and not becoming a geeky admin spending the whole day in teenagers forums and mailing lists.)

PS1: "You can compile the latest version of anything." You still get that "solution" when asking on forums and mailing lists. Yes, believe me, you still get that line in 2012.

PS2: There's another big company behind a Linux desktop: Red Hat, but a) You have to pay for it, while the situation with system/apps updates is no better than Canonical's, and b) The desktop is not their specialty and they admit they don't really care about it since "there's no business to be made there". Red Hat make their money on servers. If you run one, that's your distro. But if you run desktops, it's not. Fedora is just a benchtest for the real thing. You don't run benchtests instead of real OSs when it comes to your customers or loved ones.

PS3: You can download the "vanilla" LibreOffice from the oficial website and do some past century command-line install (no single .deb whatsoever). However, you'll lose all the integration Canonical puts into its patched version of LibreOffice, including the ability to have a global menu and HUD functionality.

You need to head over to www.archlinux.org and have a look. If you want a bleeding edge distro that is extremely well documented and very pleasant to maintain look into this.

I too started out with Ubuntu and I would never return from arch. I currently have a growing office set up of 7 machines on arch as more of them get switched over and it's great. Harder to get used to than ubuntu perhaps, but far more rewarding in the end.

In the case of WINE, it actually runs the DLLs and EXEs. While I don't use Photoshop, I have downloaded and ran a number of Windows S/W (e.g., Notepad++) under WINE. They all run quite fast.

I'd like to know how you did this. I've been trying for a couple years and can't even get a basic text editor to run.

I have Ubuntu 10.04 on and old laptop. So the following relates to that release of Ubuntu. I am not a fan of Unity, so I have not tried it on 11.04 or it should work the same - I assume from a "desktop window" - not sure how you go about it with DASH.

After installing WINE (if it isn't already installed), I download Notepad++, for example, and make sure the ".exe" file has the "execute" box checked (right click and click on properties and then select permissions - make sure the "execute box" is checked. While in (or reselect) Properties, it should say "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader" at the top - default when you click on a Windows .exe file. Click on it (or the .exe itself) and it should run. Then you should see the Windows installer box just like Windows.

Windows programs I use are Notepad++, CCleaner (clean the registry), EditPad, Revo Uninstaller, Free PDF Editor and a number of others. I also go into the Windows directory (the Wine "Browse C: Drive", select the "Windows" directory and then the "System32" directory and create a shortcut from the .exe files I want - Wordpad, CMD, Regedit, etc. BTW, when you install WINE (or if it is already installed), you will see under Applications -> WINE -> Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad. I set up a WINE folder on my desktop and create folders within for "Programs". The other WINE functions are executables that I can right click and place on the desktop and then move into the WINE folder I created. I also create a WINEAPPS for those .exe files I downloaded - just to keep them organized - you get the idea.

BTW, I did this within the Gnome 2 environment. I haven't played with it in Unity - maybe someday - but it should work the same there once you are in a "regular" desktop with icons.

A word of caution - be careful with Windows utilities that may scrog your hard drive and screw up your Linux install. You are in a Linux file system and some Windows/DOS utilities assume they are on a FAT/NTFS system and work accordingly.

A slight addition and correction to my previous reply/comment, slightly before this:

"In your third paragraph, you state

"While Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux desktop,...".

Would you mind providing citations for this statement, which I could use for people--in particular, my CIS (Computer Information Systems) and CS (Computer Science) students--who "...want proof..." of this, when the subject of Linux is discussed?."

Your, and Ars Technica's, help in providing this information will be deeply appreciated.

A slight addition and correction to my previous reply/comment, slightly before this:

"In your third paragraph, you state

"While Ubuntu is the most widely used Linux desktop,...".

Would you mind providing citations for this statement, which I could use for people--in particular, my CIS (Computer Information Systems) and CS (Computer Science) students--who "...want proof..." of this, when the subject of Linux is discussed?."

Your, and Ars Technica's, help in providing this information will be deeply appreciated.

"Butting in", at one point Ubuntu (based on Debian) most likely was the most popular (and widely used Linux distro). Until release 11.04, it used Gnome 2 for its desktop environment, which was similar to the XP desktop. The transition from a Windows "type desktop" to a Linux system was made easier in Ubuntu (I know some KDE users will disagree). Starting with Ubuntu 11.04, it switched to the Unity desktop environment - analogous to Windows 8 switching to "Metro" (or whatever they want to call it now). While this type of desktop is more suited to tablets (touch screen) and the like, it is not as suitable to a "windows" desktop environment where you use a mouse to click on an icon to start an application. While you can get there through a touch screen, it is not as direct as when you boot into an icon desktop. The general feedback has been the same for both Ubuntu with Unity and Windows 8, most comments seem to dislike this type of approach for the desktop (being a different animal than the tablet). As a result, Linux Mint (which was also popular and, actually, Ubuntu/Debian based) has gained popularity by supporting the Cinnamon and/or MATE desktops (although they are installable with Ubuntu too). Both bring back the look and feel of the Gnome 2 desktop. BTW, there is now a Gnome 3 desktop environment which, like Unity, has not been well received.

If you have a system with VirtualBox installed, you could download Ubuntu 12.10 and another distro such as ZorinOS or SolusOS and install them in a VM. To get an idea, VMs of about 10GB should be more than sufficient for each. ZorinOS actually allows for 3 desktop environments, Gnome 2, the look and feel of XP or Windows 7 (still Linux under the hood).